Step into the role of an aspiring martial-arts master and follow the path of the open palm or the closed fist. In this multi-award-winning action-RPG, your choices and actions will determine the fate of the entire Jade Empire. Will you prevent the destruction of this beautiful land, or will you c...
Step into the role of an aspiring martial-arts master and follow the path of the open palm or the closed fist. In this multi-award-winning action-RPG, your choices and actions will determine the fate of the entire Jade Empire. Will you prevent the destruction of this beautiful land, or will you crush it beneath your heel? Are you a warrior who uses his strength and fighting mastery to bring peace, or will you instead use your power to bring pain and ruin?
The choice is yours.
The Original Award Winning Jade Empire
An incredible, engaging story that makes you the noble hero or the treacherous villain!
A wealth of fascinating characters to interact with.
Beautiful, mysterious lands to explore, discover, and save...or conquer.
A rich blend of role-playing and exciting real-time combat.
New monsters and enemies.
New fighting styles.
Customizable, intuitive controls including support for game-pads and keyboard/mouse.
Increased graphics resolutions and new visual effects.
I remember playing Jade Empire on the original Xbox years ago as a kid and teenager and I loved it then. The story, the music, the fighting mechanics, even the graphics at the time were stellar and untouchable! While the graphics have aged a bit as well as some of the mechanics, the story and gameplay are still as engaging and wonderful as ever. Playing this nostalgic game after so many years is nothing short of a treat! And the version of the game through GOG is smooth, considering how old it is. I wish I could give a higher rating! If you haven't had the pleasure of playing Jade Empire, do yourself a favor and play it. It is one of the best and most unique stories I've ever come across.
This game has lag/stuttering problem because it was made for 30 fps on xbox and not 60 fps for pc. You can set this game to run on 30 fps by changing ClampFPS= to 0, in the file jadeempire.ini, you will still having lag/stuttering issues some places in the game. It is a good game, the reason i give it 2 stars is bad port from console to pc.
Jade Empire is a game that has a reputation, good old days of Bioware and when they did great games. Well, after finally playing and beating it in 2017 I can say that this is a decent game with moments of greatness. The Visuals and music are good, having in mind the time when it was released, it still looks great. The main problem is two-fold - story and gameplay. The plot of this game is much too predictable, almost without any unique and creative attempts. Each story beat, each sidequest, each companion dialogue is almost a direct copy of ones seen in other games and works of fiction. The crazy berserker alcoholic, the mad inventor, the silent, brooding warrior, the charismatic rogue, the naive village girl. Even the one quest where your character is forced to be an actor and improvise on stage. Having said that, there are some great moments, amazing dialogues but this whole experience is medicore at best. The gameplay is another thing, on paper it is amazing, multiple styles, dodges, types of attacks that let you have very strategic battles. In practice, a lot of enemies are resistant to a lot of types of attacks, forcing you to play just one or two specific ways. You think you can choose a way to play, like being a mage, but you can't you need to bee a jack-of-all-trades. Another problem is the massive inbalance in the fighting styles. It is painfully easy to find the best, strongest ways to deal with opponents - to break the game and become basically unbeatable. The combat and gameplay is fun but unbalanced. All in all, this is a good game, but it is the equivallent of an action flick that you will watch once and never think about it again.
Just finished this.
A nice departure from the usual trappings, though at times the game feels... well, not unfinished, more half done and squeezed out to shipping.
Thats not a terrible thing though - one of its strengths is the fact that with a simplistic combat system, the game isnt too long (I spent maybe 24 hours on it), but compared to other games of the genre (and Bioware games in particular) the last couple of acts feel heavily edited down.
If you find you don't ever seem to have the time to fully enjoy something like Kotor or NWN, maybe give this a shot. The look of the game is top notch, as is the OST, and some of the characters are pretty memorable. Similarly if the mentioned flaws are putting you off, but you enjoyed other bioware games, give it a shot. However, if you're looking for a full on action game, this is probably not for you!
Oddly would have made a great animated series as well.
This game has perfect potential for a remaster! (unlikely to happen, sadly)
Overall it's like a worse Dragon Age Origins, with its own special flavour. I enjoyed myself, but I suspect that was heavily based on my knowledge and love of wuxia movies. (if only they went for some of the more gonzo aspects of Wuxia!)
The story structure and companion design is typical Bioware, to a fault. I found the NPCs to be quite uninteresting and the romance very tacked on. If you've played any BioRPGs, you'll recognize the template immediately. DAO especially is exactly this, but far better.
The story itself wasn't super surprising or deep, it worked fine for what it was meant to do.
The visuals are "charming". I really enjoyed what they achieved with the limited technology, the game certainly delivers on "fake China" in spades.
Unfortunately the level design is cramped and doesn't fit terribly well with this style of RPG, the backtracking somehow feels more tedious if it's from this camera angle and the restricted spaces can make combat quite frustrating.
Speaking of combat, it's a mixed bag. At times it feels real nice, you're jumping around and dispatching hordes of enemies with swift punch and kick combos, or elemental waves and so on.
Unfortunately the various styles, despite there being so many, don't feel as unique or useful. I hoped leveling up would change the combo structure, or add new abilities. But because there are so many styles, the higher levels just increase stats.
They're also clearly unbalanced, I was very much overpowered in the second half of the game and the only challenge I faced were the various glitches and unintentionally frustrating obstacles and bad design.
Speaking of frustration - the game uses a out-of-combat save system, but also saves at certain points.
I wish there was a more frequent and consistent system of checkpoints instead. At some places the game saves when you expect it to and in many (super frustrating) places it doesn't - forcing you to fight long multi sequenced battles with many cutscenes inbetween over and over and over.
The very first battle on the beach is incredibly frustrating - you're still learning the system and you have to finish all the stages in one go.
The shmup sequences were interesting and unexpected, but also not quite polished and therefore not quite enjoyable by themselves.
In summary: Jade Empire is still pretty interesting and worth playing - if only for the reason it's oneof its kind. 3/5, +1 if you're a Wuxia fan.
Be prepared for occassional bad design, repetition and frustration. Fortunately it's not a long game, you can enjoy it in a few afternoons.
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